freedom4kids wrote:Carl,
My understanding is that the BEEB was no longer accepting final product originating and delivering in the Super 16 format. Contraindications abound considering there are or were numerous examples of popular UK shows originating on Super 16, i.e.
"This move comes after a campaign led by Directors UK to advocate that filmmakers should be able to make a choice to shoot and deliver on both film and digital formats."
Meanwhile the Walking Dead continue to munch on Super 16 cameras and film.
Yes - what originated as a purely shortlived technical problem then inadvertently became policy - even when the technical problem was subsequently resolved. Obviously from the evidence, powers that be have continued to circumnavigate the silly policy anyway - ie. shooting film, making it broadcastable (in house or out) and having it broadcast - since in fact there is no technical impediment.
It's all just politics really. If you can connect the right circuits together at the right time, with the right papers and contracts signed (or even not signed), regardless of management level policy, the work goes to air.
This sort of thing goes on all the time. Everywhere. I work as a software developer and its often the case that media arrives in some humungus data format inappropropriate for the task at hand, but easy for the makers of the media to produce that way. You send it back to the company that made the work and ask them to to put it in a particular format and they say "sure no problem". Next thing you know you've got a producer on the phone arguing that it wasn't in the contract that they do that - not because it wasn't in the contract - but because, in reality, the poor guy tasked to do the conversion doesn't actually know how to do it. So you say "ok don't worry, we'll do it this end" and then you set up a conversion which takes four hours and you have your own manager then complaining that you should be doing some other task. This then escalates up to some management meeting where they decide that formats will be contractually specified. This goes back to the originating company which then charges some exorbitant fee for the conversion (once they work out how to do it) and you discover it would have been cheaper if you had done the conversion yourself. But the egos in management are now convinced they've made the right call and the policy sticks - but in reality the poor guy at the other end still doesn't understand how to make it work so you end up doing it yourself anyway because your manager suddenly decides they don't give a shit about the policy ... and rightly so.
But the policy ends up sitting around unchanged anyway.
Carl
